#of the (predominantly) white men of the era to find their takes funny

[isaacathom]

based on our movie night track records its possible that i, isaac, simply should not watch any comedy movie published before 2007

[joshjacksons]

Joshua Jackson interview with Refinery29

Against my better judgement, and at the risk of losing any semblance of journalistic objectivity, I start my conversation with Joshua Jackson by effusively telling him what a dream come true it is to be talking to him. See, like many millennial women who grew up watching the late ‘90s and early 2000s teen drama Dawson’s Creek, Jackson’s Pacey Witter means a lot to me. Pacey is one of the rare fictional teen boys of my youth whose adolescent charisma, romantic appeal, and general boyfriend aptitude hold up all these years later (unlike The O.C’s Seth Cohen or Gossip Girl’s Chuck Bass) and that is due in large part to the wit, vulnerability, and care Jackson brought to the character.

It’s the same intention he’s afforded all of his famous roles — Peter Bishop in Fringe, Cole Lockhart in The Affair, and even as a 14-year-old in his first acting gig as sweet-faced heartthrob Charlie Conway in The Mighty Ducks. Now, Jackson, 43, has matured into a solid supporting actor (with memorable turns in Little Fires Everywhere and When They See Us) and as a leading man who can draw you into a story with just his voice (Jackson’s latest project is narrating the psychological thriller and Canadian Audible original, Oracle, one of the over 12,000 titles available today on Audible.ca’s the Plus Catalogue) or find humanity in the most sinister men (he’s currently playing a sociopath with a god complex in Dr. Death). His magnetic pull is as evident as it was when he was the guy you rooted for in a show named after another guy’s creek. Jackson has never seemed to mind the fact that so many people still bring up Pacey decades later, and that’s part of why as an adult, he’s one of the few childhood crushes I still have on a pedestal. I tell him just a tiny slice of this, and Jackson graciously sits up straighter and promises to bring his A-game to our Zoom exchange. Jackson is in what appears to be an office, flanked by mess, like a true work-from-home Dad. He and his wife, fellow actor Jodie Turner-Smith, welcomed a daughter in the early days of the pandemic in 2020, and he tells me that fatherhood and marriage are the best decisions he has ever made. Jackson and Turner-Smith are a rare Hollywood couple who choose to let us in on their love, but not obnoxiously — just through flirty Instagram comments and cheeky tweets. Their pairing is part of Jackson’s enduring appeal. It’s nice to think that Pacey Witter grew up to be a doting dad and adoring husband, even if his wife’s name is Jodie, not Joey.

Jackson is an animated conversationalist, leaning into the camera to emphasize his points — especially when the topic of diversity comes up. White celebs don’t get asked about racism in Hollywood the way their counterparts of colour do, and when they do, they’re usually hesitant at best, and unequipped at worst, to tackle these conversations. Jackson is neither. He’s open, willing, and eager to discuss systemic inequality in the industry he’s grown up in. It’s the bare minimum a straight white man in Hollywood can do, and Jackson seems to know this. When he ventures briefly into trying to explain to me, a Black woman, the perils of being Black, female, and online, he catches himself and jokes that of course, I don’t need him to tell me the racism that happens in the comment section of his wife’s Instagram. The self-deprecating delivery is one I’m familiar with from watching Jackson onscreen for most of my life, and seeing it in person (virtually) renders me almost unable to form sentences. Jackson’s charm is disarming, but his relaxed Canadian energy is so relatable, I manage to maintain my professionalism long enough to get through our conversation. Refinery29: Your voice has been in my head for a few days because I've been listening to Canadian Audible Original, Oracle. What drew you to this project and especially the medium of audio storytelling?

Joshua Jackson: The book itself is such a page turner. I also love the idea of those old radio plays. It's like a hybrid between the beauty of reading a book on the page where your imagination does all of it. We craft a little bit of the world, but because this is a noir thriller married with this metaphysical world, there's a lot of dark and creepy places that your imagination gets to fill in for yourself.

I'm noticing a trend in some of the roles you've been taking on lately, with this and Dr. Death, these stories are very dark and creepy. But so many people still think of you as Pacey Witter, or as Charlie Conway, the prototypical good guys of our youth. Are you deliberately trying to kill Pacey and Charlie?

JJ: I'm not trying to kill anybody — except on screen [laughs]. It's funny, I didn't really think of these two things as companion pieces, but I won't deny that there may be something subconscious in this anxiety, stress-filled year that we've all just had. That may be what I was trying to work out was some of that stress, because that's the beauty of my job. Instead of therapy, I just get someone to pay me to say somebody else's words. So, yeah, that could be a thing [but] the thought process that went into them both was very different. Even though this is a dark story, [lead character, police psychic] Nate Russo is still the hero. [Dr. Death’s] Christopher Duntsch very much is not at all. I can't pretend to know my own mind well enough to be able to tell you exactly how [these two roles] happened, but it happened.

That might be something that you should work through with an actual therapist. JJ: Exactly. Yeah, maybe real therapy is on the docket for me [laughs].

So I was listening to Oracle and you're doing these various creepy voices — I’m sorry the word “creepy” keeps coming up.

JJ: Are you trying to tell me something? You know what? I wanted to skip straight to the creepy old man phase of my career. So, it sounds like I'm doing a good job.

You're doing amazing, sweetie [laughs]. So, I was thinking you must be really good at bedtime stories with your daughter doing all these voices. Or is she still too young for that?

JJ: No! She's all the way into books. Story time is my favourite part of the day because it gives me the opportunity to have that time with her just one-on-one. Her favorite book right now is a book called Bedtime Bonnet. Every night I bring out three books, and she gets to pick one. The other two shift a little bit, but Bedtime Bonnet is every single night.

I love that. Since you're married to a Black woman, you know a thing or two about bonnets. JJ: ​​Yeah, well I'm getting my bonnet education. And I'm getting my silk sheet education. I'm behind the curve, but I'm figuring it out [laughs].

You said in an interview recently that you are now at the age where the best roles for men are. And I wonder if you can expand on that and whether you think of the fact that the same cannot be said for the majority of women actors in their 40s?

JJ: What's great about the age that I'm at now as a man is that, generally speaking, the characters — even if they're not the central character of this show — are well fleshed out. They're being written from a personal perspective, usually from a writer who has enough lived experience and wants to tell the story of a whole character. Whereas when you're younger — and obviously I was very lucky with some of the characters that I was able to play  – you're the son or the boyfriend, or you're a very two-dimensional character. It's gotten better, but still a lot like you're either the precocious child or you're the brooding one. I will say that while I would agree with you to a certain point for women, I think that this is probably the best era to be a not 25-year-old-woman in certainly the entirety of my career. And it is also the best time to be a Black woman inside of the industry. There's still more opportunity for a 40-year-old white man than there is for a 40-year-old white woman, but it is better now than it has ever been. The roles that women are able to inhabit and occupy and the opportunities that are out there have multiplied. If I started my career in playing two-dimensional roles to get the three-dimensional roles, most women started their career in three-dimensional roles and end up at “wife” or “mom.” And that's just not the case anymore. There's just a lot of broadly diverse stories being told that centre women. So you're right, but in the last five years, six years I would say, there has really been a pretty significant shift.

And I think that shift is happening because who's behind the camera is also changing. JJ: Right? Who holds the purse strings. That's big. Who gets to green light the show to begin with? You have to have a variety of different faces inside of that room. And then, who's behind the camera. What is the actual perspective that we're telling the story from? The male gaze thing is very real. Dr. Death had three female directors. The central character of Dr. Death is an outrageously toxic male figure. Who knows more about toxic male BS than women? Particularly women who are in a predominantly male work environment. So these directors had a very specific take and came at it with a clarity that potentially a man wouldn't see, because we have blind spots about ourselves. We're in a space where there's a recognition that we've told a very narrow band of what's available in stories. There's so many stories to be told and it's okay for us to broaden out from another white cop.

I hope that momentum continues. Okay, I have to tell you something: I’m a little obsessed with your wife, Jodie Turner-Smith. JJ: Me too. As you should be! I love how loudly and publicly you both love on each other. But I need you to set the scene for me. When you are leaving flirty Instagram comments, and she's tweeting thirsty things about you, are you in the same room? Do you know that the other one is tweeting? What's happening?

JJ: We're rarely in the same room [writing] the thirsty comments because that usually just gets said to each other. But, look, if either of us misses a comment, you better believe at night, there's a, "Hey, did you see what I wrote?" One, she's very easy to love out loud and two, she's phenomenal. And I have to say, the love and support that is coming my direction has been a revelation in my life. I've said this often, and it just is the truth: If you ever needed to test whether or not you had chosen the right partner in life, just have a baby at the beginning of a pandemic and then spend a year and a half together. And then you know. And then you absolutely know. I didn't get married until fairly late in the game. I didn't have a baby till very late in the game and they're the two best choices I've ever made in my life.

I'm just going to embarrass you now by reading one of Jodie's thirsty comments to you. She tweeted, “Objectifying my husband on the internet is my kink. I thought you guys knew this by now,” with a gif that said "No shame." JJ: [laughs] That sounds about right.

She's not the only one though. There's this whole thirst for Joshua Jackson corner of the internet. And it feels like there's been a bit of a heartthrob resurgence for you now at your big age. How do you feel about that?

JJ: I hadn't really put too much thought into it, but I am happy that my wife is thirsty for me. What about the rest of us? JJ: That's great for y'all, but it's most important that my wife is thirsty for me. Good answer. You're good at this husband thing. You recently revealed that Jodie proposed to you. Then it became this big story, and people were so surprised by it. How did you feel about the response? JJ: Thank you for giving me the opportunity to give context to this story. So I accidentally threw my wife under the bus because that story was told quickly and it didn't give the full context and holy Jesus, the internet is racist and misogynist. So yes, we were in Nicaragua on a beautiful moonlit night, it could not possibly have been more romantic. And yes, my wife did propose to me and yes, I did say yes, but what I didn't say in that interview was there was a caveat, which is that I'm still old school enough that I said, "This is a yes, but you have to give me the opportunity [to do it too]." She has a biological father and a stepdad, who's the man who raised her. [I said], ‘You have to give me the opportunity to ask both of those men for your hand in marriage.’ And then, ‘I would like the opportunity to re-propose those to you and do it the old fashioned way down on bended knee.’ So, that's actually how the story ended up.

So, there were two proposals. I do feel like that is important context. JJ: Yes, two proposals. And also for anybody who is freaked out by a woman claiming her own space, shut the fuck up. Good God, you cannot believe the things people were leaving my wife on Instagram. She did it. I said ‘yes.’ We're happy. That's it. That's all you need to know. That has been a real education for me as a white man, truly. The way people get in her comments and the ignorance and ugliness that comes her way is truly shocking. And it has been a necessary, but an unpleasant education in just the way people relate to Black bodies in general, but Black female bodies in specific. It is not okay. We have a long way to go. Jodie is such an inspiration because it seems like she handles it in stride. She handles it all with humour and with grace. JJ: She does. And look, I think it's like a golden cage, the concept of the strong Black woman. I would wish for my wife that she would not have to rise above with such amazing strength and grace, above the ugliness that people throw at her on a day to day. I am impressed with her that she does it, but I would wish that that would not be the armour that she has to put on every morning to just navigate being alive. That's a word. That's a word, Joshua Jackson.

The 13-year-old in me needs to ask this. We are in the era of reboots. If they touched Dawson's Creek — which is a masterpiece that should not be touched — but if they did, what would you want it to look like? JJ: I think it should look a lot like it looked the first time. To me, what was great about that story was it was set in a not cool place. It wasn't New York, it wasn't LA, it wasn't London. It wasn't like these were kids who were on the cutting edge of culture, but they were kids just dealing with each other and they were also very smart and capable of expressing themselves. It's something that I loved at that age performing it. And I think that is the reason it has lived on.  We have these very reductive ideas of what you're capable of at 16, 17, 18. And my experience of myself at that point was not as a two-dimensional jock or nerd or pretty girl. You are living potentially an even more full life at that point because everything's just so heightened. [Dawson’s Creek] never talked down to the people that it was portraying. That's one of the things that I loved about it as a book nerd growing up. The vocabulary of Dawson's Creek was always above my level and that was refreshing. To go back to the “diversity” conversation, you can't really make a show with six white leads anymore and that’s a good thing. But I also don't know how I feel about taking a thing, rebooting it, and just throwing Black characters in there. 

JJ: I hear that. And there's certain contexts in which it doesn't work unless you're making it a thing about race, right? If you watch Bridgerton, obviously you're living inside of a fantasy world, and so you're bringing Black characters into this traditionally white space and what would historically be a white space. And now you are able to have a conversation about myth-making and inclusion and who gets to say what and who gets to act how. So that's interesting, but I don’t think you’re just throwing in a Black character if you changed Joey to a Black woman [or] Pacey to a Black man. What you're doing is you're enriching the character. Let's say one of those characters is white and one of those characters is Black. Now, there's a whole rich conversation to be had between these two kids, the political times that we live in, the cultural flow that is going through all of us right now. I think that makes a better story. All these conversations around comic books in particular like, "Well, that's a white character." It's like, Man, shut up. What are you talking about? It is a comic book character! Joey and Pacey don't have to be white. Dawson and Jen don't have to be white. And this is what we were talking about a little bit earlier. We get better the broader our perspective is, both as humans, but also in the entertainment industry. So if you went back to a story like [Dawson’s Creek], what was important in that show was class not race, which I think is true for a lot of small Northeastern towns. They are very white. But if you brought race into that as well, you don't diminish the amount of the stories that you can tell. You enrich the tapestry of that show. So I think that would be a great idea.

Make Pacey Witter a Black man in 2021 is what I just heard from you. JJ: Hashtag ‘Make Pacey Witter A Black Man’. There we go!

[thedeaditeslayer]

Running Time Restored Interview: 1997 Josh Becker and Bruce Campbell Indie Gets a New Life in 2K.

You can read the full interview on the upcoming release With Josh Becker, Bruce Campbell, and Don May Jr. from Diabolik Magazine below. 

In 1995 on New Year’s Eve, Josh Becker had an idea. Born out of a session pondering Alfred Hitchcock’s legendary, true crime classic, Rope, he decided that he was going to improve upon the master of suspense’s legendary concept of shooting a film in real time. A daunting task but Becker was up to the challenge.

What resulted was perhaps one of the most ambitious efforts to ever grace the silver screen, Running Time. This neo-noir thriller about a heist gone wrong and a small-time criminal who rekindles his love affair with his high-school sweetheart was a hidden gem that didn’t get the recognition that it deserved. Written expressly for Becker���s childhood friend and Super 8 cohort, Bruce Campbell, the pair were once again, doing gonzo-style filmmaking just like when they were growing up in Michigan with the likes of Sam Raimi and Rob Tapert.

Josh Becker was and is an adventurous soul who does things his way, just like the director gods of old. When I think of his work, the names of John Ford, William Wyler and John Huston readily spring to mind. There is something admirable about his driven determination that was the heart and soul of this black and white throwback to another era which is ultimately endearing. Yes, I have a special place in my heart for Running Time because it is honest and not filled with “tentpole” tendencies. At the core of it is the written word. The end result is one of the most overlooked masterpieces of both Becker’s and Campbell’s careers.

What is truly amazing is that this flick was shot in two weeks and that everyone went home early. It was like having a 9 to 5 job. No 18-hour-days, just fast, efficient, run and gun style filmmaking that resulted in a production that could stand toe to toe with noir classics from a bygone era like The Petrified Forest and Desperate Hours.

Prior to Running Time, Bruce was known predominantly for his work in the horror and science fiction genres which can sometimes be limiting for an actor. Becker gave him an incredible script to work with that really showcased his range as a thespian. Behind the smart-ass quips and bravado lies a talented individual who takes his craft seriously. He is capable of creating complex characters and he is most assuredly fit to be a romantic lead.

I had the chance to sit down with the major players in the restoration of Running Time (Josh Becker, Bruce Campbell, Don May, Jr. and Gerry Kissell) to reminisce about the journey of this film from its humble beginnings to preserving this indie classic for future generations.

The Director and His Muse

Diabolique: Bruce, I have to start off by telling you that Running Time is my favorite out of all of your films.  

Bruce Campbell: It’s a cool, little flick. Too bad it sort of escaped, it wasn’t released as the old joke goes.

Diabolique: What I like so much about it is the neo-noir aspect. It’s a throwback to the 40’s and 50’s. In Josh’s book, Rushes, he talks about how he convinced you to be in the film. You weren’t getting paid and you invested in it. What was his pitch, how did he sell the concept to you?

BC: The pitch was that it was NOT McHale’s Navy. I just spent 11 weeks in Mexico just sort of bullshitting our way through that film where we would make up our lines of dialogue because there was nothing written for us. In the script it would say things like, “McHale and his guys get off the boat,” “McHale and his men go to Cuba.” Which means they hadn’t thought anything up for you. I did it because I liked the show as a kid. It was a very popular thing; it was from Universal. It made sense at the time. It was just a case of when something is underwritten, the problem that it causes actors. I had just come off of that, and Running Time was very ambitious, low budget it was meant to be this conceit of being done in one shot so it was cinematic. So, I was like, okay, yeah. It was like the anti-studio movie, small crew, fast moving and yet no money. Basically, I invested the money that I was paid back into the movie in order for them to make it. It was definitely for a love of the movie type deal.

Josh Becker: I’ve known Bruce since we were twelve and I’d seen him in a number of plays. I knew that he had a much bigger range as an actor than he’d had a chance to show at that point. Plus, he’s a pleasure to work with. Once I pitched him the idea, he was all for it, partially because the long takes are a way for an actor to really show their ability.

Diabolique: Thinking about your filmography, Bruce, you haven’t played a traditional romantic lead. Do you see Running Time as a love story of sorts?

BC: What’s funny is Josh had Carl come back. In a proper film noir, he would have gone, you would have heard the tires squeal and she would be sitting there crying and the credits would roll and that would be it. It would be bleak, but Josh deep down is a sentimentalist and I think I am too. We had no issue with the happy ending. We wanted to make the audiences think for quite a long period of time that it’s going to be a sad ending. She packs her bag and then she unpacks it. The whole thing is quite an extended piece but I thought it was well worth playing just to kind of throw a little wrinkle in it. Maybe even in a criminal story you can have a happy ending.

Diabolique: In terms of the storyline, Josh, we all know that Rope was the blueprint for Running Time. You hadn’t made a film in 7 years. What was it about that production that captured your imagination besides the challenge of the “long take”?

JB: Part of my inspiration was simply getting another feature film made after seven years of working in television, which was never my goal.  But as I thought about Rope, I wondered why the continuous, real-time concept didn’t really have any impact on the story. Then it occurred to me that there was no time element involved.  Two young men—ostensibly Leopold and Loeb—have killed another young man for the fun of it, put the body in a chest, then invited people over for a party, including a cop. Well, if the chest was spring loaded and had a timer on it so that at some point it would pop open and reveal the corpse, that would be a time element. So, I thought, how do you use the real time technique and add a ticking clock? The first story that came to mind was a heist which generally has a time element—we’ve got to get the money and get out of here before we’re caught.

Diabolique: Running Time was shot in sequence like a play. Did it pose any challenges for you as an actor?

BC: I liked what Josh was trying to do. These long uninterrupted takes from an actor’s point of view, you know stuff can get really choppy these days. My complaint from Burn Notice is they wouldn’t let a full sentence stay on camera; they would have to cut away to somebody else. It felt like they had to keep cutting, cutting and cutting. This movie was no cutting for like ten minutes at a time. It’s great from an actor’s perspective because you can feel the juices flowing. It’s like a play. You can work on the pacing; you can have something build over a period of time and minutes to play out in literally real time. It’s a real time crime drama. I liked it conceptually and it was challenging. There was a fair amount of dialogue because my guy, Carl is calling the shots. I thought it was a good premise. Guy gets out of prison turns right around and robs the prison because he knows how the prison laundry system works. I thought that was pretty sound. I am always sympathetic for the low budget independent movie. I always will be.

Diabolique: Were there any other films that influenced you and your writing partner, Peter Choi? The entire concept is very noir and the desperate situation that Carl finds himself in is reminiscent of any number of films from the 1940s.

JB: My main inspiration was Straight Time with Dustin Hoffman, an overlooked movie from 1978. And though I didn’t think of it at the time, several folks brought up Joseph Lewis’s Gun Crazy after it came out, and I do see that. The film has one long take in it during a bank robbery, and even though the camera stays in the backseat of a car, it has that same feeling of a real time event.

Diabolique: I know you are a fan of classic movies, Bruce and in a sense Running Time reminds me of Desperate Hours or The Petrified Forest especially when the robbery is botched and the situation is escalating in the enclosed office. Did you find any inspiration from the noir genre for your portrayal of Carl?

BC: No, but the classic tough guys were always awesome. We loved them all, Bogart and Robert Mitchum…the fact that Josh shot the film in black and white was perfect. Because it really helped lend itself to a look of that time period when Jack Palance was a leading man.

Diabolique: In your book Rushes, you talked about your decision to shoot in 16 mm Kodak ASA 64 black and white stock. You get sharper images due to the finer grain of the film, but did that pose any problems in terms of showcasing your work at that time since most people weren’t shooting in black and white?

JB:  I didn’t think of it regarding showcasing my work. I thought it was appropriate for the subject matter and that it would be visually striking.  Also, moving the camera from inside to outside in color posed the problem of adding or removing filters which would not be an issue with black and white.

Diabolique: You shot over a period of 10 days which was unheard of even back in the 90’s. How were you able to keep things moving along?

JB: It was based on pre-planning. I knew exactly what I wanted. We rehearsed the film and the actors were all very comfortable with the dialogue. Then it was just an issue of getting the complicated camera moves in regard to the actor’s blocking to work right, and that didn’t turn out to be all that difficult.

Diabolique: As an actor, did you enjoy working on an accelerated timetable?

BC: It was exciting to do and so different. The toughest thing was the technical demands. It wasn’t like there were explosions and stuff like that. But in order to do blocking inside of an apartment, the camera is moving in circles, well, the crew had to move every object behind the camera before it got there and then had to put it back before the camera saw it again. So, there was a lot of voodoo, a lot of magic. We would rehearse and rehearse and rehearse and we could never get it right. Finally, we were like fuck it. Let’s just start shooting because everyone gets a little more alert when you shoot. That did it. That allowed us to conquer the impossible. After 3 or 4 takes if we got it, we were done even if it was 10:30 in the morning. I don’t think we spent more than two thirds of a day getting that particular shot. The end result is cool. I’ve seen the cleaned-up version without all the scratches and the dust marks. You can’t even tell what year it is. It almost seems like its videotape transferred like those teledramas of the 60’s that were done on TV. There were moments in the film that weren’t perfect, and that’s okay.

Diabolique: When I revisited Running Time recently, I was impressed with how well it holds up because some efforts don’t. With the 2K restoration, Bruce, this will give your fans a chance to see it. For some, it might be their first time. Do you have a scene that you are particularly fond of?

BC: There’s some scenes that are fun to do. After I get shot, I am in Janie’s apartment and she’s trying to put me together, that fainting on the toilet while she’s trying to patch me together it felt kind of real, playing shot and being delirious. Stuff like that. Just fun to be able to take the moment to do it.

Diabolique: Josh, do you feel shooting in black and white made the 2K restoration more challenging?

JB:  Slow speed black and white film stock has a lot of silver in it which creates an inordinate amount of static electricity. When I did the initial film transfer back in 1997, the negative kept getting covered with dust, causing us to have to stop and clean the film every 30-60 minutes. Since the transfer was $375 an hour—in 1997 dollars—I could only stop so many times before it became financially prohibitive.  Dust on a black and white negative shows up as white dots. Using the newest technology, Don May was able to remove all of the dust digitally. Therefore, the film has never looked as good as it does now.

Diabolique: What excites you the most about Running Time getting restored, Bruce?

BC: I am always happy when something gets re-released which means in this case, it gets preserved. It will look fantastic in 2K. That’s why with all these reissues fans are like, “Why should we care?” Like well, if you care about preservation, this means it will be the latest version of a movie that is fairly obscure. Sometimes a movie can die on the vine because no one will pay the money to keep it current. Now, we can show the sucker, hopefully, anywhere.

Diabolique: Josh, do you have any plans to showcase Running Time once the restoration is completed? This is a great film that fans should definitely see.

JB: We have no plans at the moment, but then the film isn’t out yet. When it’s done, we’ll see what happens.

Breathing New Life into Running Time: The Art of Restoration

Don May, Jr. along with Jerry Chandler and Charles Fiedler created Synapse Films in 1997. Known for their work in preserving unique genre classics, May had previously collaborated with Josh Becker when his company restored the director’s 1985 production, Thou Shalt Not Kill…Except.

Gerry Kissell was the official artist on Running Time and will be reprising his role for the 2K restoration. He has been friends with Josh since the Freaky Film Festival where he and Bruce premiered the film on the University of Illinois campus.

Both gentlemen were kind enough to take time out of their busy schedules to talk to us.

Diabolique: Were you able to obtain the original negative for Running Time?

Don May, Jr: Yes, thankfully. Josh Becker is a true movie fan and loves the filmmaking process, so we were fortunate to work with him. He kept everything stored properly in a climate-controlled vault, as a man who cares about his movies should.

Diabolique: Can you talk about the scanning process for 2K?

DMJ: The 16mm negative was separated into A/B rolls, so we had to scan a lot of reels separately at Prasad in Burbank, CA. Luckily, because of the actual nature of the “one-take” aesthetic Josh utilized, there were only a total of about 30 cuts in the entire film… hidden in editing, of course. So, we basically scanned the 30 separate shots, and then assembled them digitally using DaVinci Resolve. We had to be VERY careful the way we put the 30 cuts back together, making sure the shots were frame accurate and of the proper length. Unlike a film that has a conformed negative separated into 10- or 20-minute reels, Running Time was all in separate pieces, with each shot edited on separate reels. It was a challenge, but we were able to use a previous master as a reference and most of it went together without a hitch. Being shot in B&W also helped in color correction to hide the edits properly to make the real-time aspect as seamless as possible. Once the film was properly assembled, we were able to ship everything off to India for restoration. Because Josh had everything stored properly for decades, the negative itself was fairly free of a lot of dirt and scratches, but we did carefully sonically clean all the pieces before scanning commenced.

Diabolique: How long does it take the digital artists to fix debris or scratches on the original negatives?

DMJ: There’s a lot of data wrangling involved. Copying data for safety. Making backups, etc. But we have a great working relationship with Prasad. They have worked on such classics as Lawrence of Arabia, How the West Was Won, A Fistful of Dollars, Gandhi, The Red Shoes, etc. They do the lion’s share of my output, and I put a lot of trust in them. They’ve never failed me. We do ship the film scans to India and that takes time. I think Running Time took about 4-5 months. I let them take their time, though, because I don’t want to have to keep sending things back for fixes. With Running Time, they did an excellent job, right from my first restoration test reels. But, again, Josh had taken very good care of his materials, so it wasn’t much of a challenge.

Diabolique: Gerry, what artwork did you originally provide for Running Time and what can we expect from you for the 2K restoration?

Gerry Kissell: I did promotional art that ended up on tee-shirts. It included the shot of the three main characters, which I called Tres Hombres, on one, Jeremy Roberts aiming the pistol at the camera on another, and the last, which you’ve seen of Bruce’s mug all heroic and chinny. All of the art was done on Bristol cold press illustration board. The new painting for the Synapse release is me, 20+ years later, a tad bit better at drawing and painting, lol.

Diabolique: Besides the idea of preserving Running Time, Don, what attracted you to the project?

DMJ: We had worked previously with Josh on Thou Shalt Not Kill…Except, and we had a lot of fun with that one. I like working with Josh. He’s a great guy, and I love that he’s so passionate about film. He loves movies, and he loves MAKING movies. It’s so great to see people like Josh doing things like Running Time, back when using computers to do a “one take” approach was non-existent. You see things today like the film 1917, which is a fine film in its own right, but they cheated a lot of its “one take” aspect using computers. Josh did Running Time, but used his brain, and actual organic film splicing and editing to achieve the same result. He’s smart, funny, talented and I love working with people like him. It also doesn’t hurt that Running Time stars Bruce Campbell, so… yeah… of course, we jumped at the chance to do it.

Diabolique: When can fans expect to see the Running Time 2K restoration?

DMJ: I would imagine late summer/early fall 2020. We’re wrapping up extras and artwork now.

[needsmoresarcasm]

A Review of Crazy Rich Asians Before Seeing Crazy Rich Asians

And several years ago, she had been e-mailed a humorous list entitled ‘Twenty Ways You Can Tell You Have Asian Parents.’ Number one on the list: Your parents never, ever call you ‘just to say hello.’ She didn’t get many of the jokes on the list, since her own experience growing up had been entirely different.

That’s the passage that sold me on Crazy Rich Asians. I know, it’s no “Life lilted to the sounds of her soliloquy, skipping across lily pads, seeking to fill her soul with elusive validity” or whatever nonsense collection of pretty sounding words sells people on books these days. That’s all to say, for me, the thrill of Crazy Rich Asians does not rest in sparkling prose but in its revolutionary ordinariness.

You see, in that passage, Rachel, a first generation Chinese American, is reflecting on the differences between herself and other Asian Americans, as a result of considering her differences with Nick, her Chinese Singaporean boyfriend.  A character in a story saying “I’m not like all the other [girls/boys/teens/football players/handsome men named Chris in a comic-book based superhero movie]” is hardly new ground. But an Asian American character specifically contemplating her differences from other Asian and Asian American characters? I feel pretty comfortable betting that you can’t even name another instance of it. Because that would require at least two Asian American or Asian characters, and then a recognition that those characters did not encompass the entire experience of all Asian Americans.

I’m confident making that bet because there are so few mainstream stories that include enough Asians to make that opportunity possible. Only 11 percent of network TV shows in 2015 even had more than one Asian actor in its main cast. There have only ever been three network sitcoms featuring an Asian American family. Ever. There have been that many network sitcoms featuring a group of predominantly white friends with the word “Friends” in the title in the last decade. And that’s not even including “Friends”! (Best Friends Forever, Friends with Better Lives, and Friends with Benefits, in case anyone was wondering. Yes, I watched every episode of them all, in case anyone was wondering again.)  And TV is the medium where Asian actors are doing the best. Want to know how many major studio films featured an Asian actor in the leading role in 2015? Zero. None. In 2015, only 3.9 percent of characters were Asian, the same as in 2007, despite the fact that Asians are the fastest growing demographic group in the US.

That’s hardly shocking, I hope, because we’ve all been outraged about whitewashing for like a solid two years now. It’s exhausting, and I don’t know that I need to rehash it. But, for the sake of propriety, let’s just see how many movie characters were whitewashed in say… the last ten years: Allison Ng in Aloha (Emma Stone), Mindy Park in The Martian (Mackenzie Davis), The Ancient One in Doctor Strange (Tilda Swinton), Light Yagami (nee Turner???) in Death Note (Nat Wolff), Motoko Kusanagi in Ghost in the Shell (Scarlett Johansson), Khan in Star Trek: Into Darkness (Benedict Cumberbatch), Hae-Joo Chang in Cloud Atlas (Jim Sturgess), Boardman Mephi in Cloud Atlas (Hugo Weaving), the Archivist in Cloud Atlas (James D’Arcy), Aang in Avatar: The Last Airbender (Noah Ringer), Lena in Annihilation (Natalie Portman), Goku in Dragonball Evolution (Justin Chatwin), Keiji Kiriya in Edge of Tomorrow (Tom Cruise), Kyo Kusanagi in The King of Fighters (Sean Faris), everyone in 21, and everyone in Speed Racer. In the last ten years. And that’s not even counting the characters who were not necessarily whitewashed, but were still inexplicably white: The Last Samurai, The Great Wall, the random white person POV in the Bruce Lee biopic Birth of the Dragon, those seven seconds on the Internet when the Mulan script had a white dude. I guess what I’m saying is, thanks Ed Skrein for opting out of Hellboy.

And so, Crazy Rich Asians is revolutionary. Sure, its satirization of class is nothing that Pride and Prejudice hasn’t done. And it’s got a Game of Thrones convoluted web of familial relations. And a Tolkein-esque love of a tangential backstory for a tertiary character (no one ever needs to know anything about Bernard Tai). But it’s not a bunch of white people in Regency era England or Westeros or Middle Earth. It’s a bunch of Asian people in the 21st century. And so when Rachel says she doesn’t identify with a Buzzfeed list, I not only get the reference, I feel it. It’s a mundane aside that feels written for me--not written for an Asian audience generally, but written for me specifically. It’s the kind of representation you only get when identity assumes the role of a character’s foundation, not a character’s personality: when you can no longer win a game of Taboo by giving the hint “the Asian one.”

It’s the type of representation that allows me to feel no pause about decrying how Eddie should just be written out of Fresh Off the Boat (send him off to college, already) because that show still has the rest of the Huang family. The Fresh Off the Boat gag about not knowing the dishwasher was more than a drying rack? That’s the hardest I’ve laughed at a TV show in ages, as a person who hadn’t run a dishwasher until he was 24, despite having grown up with one in the house. The extended bit about having to prepare for Asian glow? Still funny, but I’ll die of alcohol poisoning before there are any signs that I’m visibly drunk. When every joke is from the perspective of an Asian American family, I don’t feel lost when a few aren’t for me.

I love Fresh Off the Boat because it’s a great family sitcom. It’s funny and heartwarming and totally accessible. And as a network sitcom entering its fifth season, that’s all it needs to be. Because if you’re looking for a different flavor of representation on TV? Try Master of None or Kim’s Convenience.  Or The Good Place, in case you identify with a sweet, dumb molotov cocktail or a fancy British giraffe. Or Superstore, for either sass or sadness personified. There might not be a buffet of TV sitcom representation, but at least the prix fixe menu has some decent options.

And books are much the same. Crazy Rich Asians (and then China Rich Girlfriend… and then Rich People Problems) is fun, pop spectacle. It’s propulsive, with drama escalating through multiple storylines until they can’t help but burst into each other. It’s a great beach read. It’s a story you could live tweet. But you’d be disappointed if you were looking to read a rumination on identity and place in America or scrolls of lofty prose. The great thing about books, though, is that there are so many of them. So if you want those things? You could probably find it somewhere.

I don’t know that I realized how truly powerful it was to feel like something was crafted just for you until devouring Chemistry by Weike Wang. Chemistry is about an Asian American PhD student who leaves her PhD program in part because she feels like she lacks the motivation to dedicate her life to answering single research questions. She’s frustrated by lab work, by the unpredictability of scientific research. When she leaves her program, she tutors kids in science - and she so clearly loves science, as she peppers scientific trivia throughout the narrative. Her voice is deadpan and her thinking analytical. Switch some pronouns around, and I’m pretty sure I just wrote an autobiography circa 2012.  

It’s hard to describe just how much feeling that catered to entirely changes the power of a piece of art. Honestly, it’s not something I’ve had much occasion to think of. Of course, Chemistry is great for so many more reasons. The writing is breathtaking in its economy. As an author, it feels like Wang can take the same five words and rearrange them into the world’s best joke and the world’s saddest tragedy. Every observation feels elemental - like chemistry, a fundamental truth of this world that Wang has just discovered. And as any good scientist, Wang has published those truths for the benefit of the public.

Celeste Ng has a similar knack for observation that’s on full display in Little Fires Everywhere. Now, Little Fires Everywhere is not primarily about Asian American characters. The only prominent Asian character does alight the most dramatic narrative in the book - a custody battle smoked in class and race wars. Still, I can’t say I particularly identify with the character, a Chinese immigrant so impoverished she leaves her child on a doorstep. But that’s not to say I don’t identify with the book. Because Little Fires Everywhere is a book about white identity, written from the outside looking in. Set in a midwest town in the 90s, race smolders in the background. Instead of merely being the default setting, the characters’ whiteness is a clear choice. It’s on full display. Much as it’s impossible to not notice the Asianness of a Mr. Miyagi, it’s impossible not to see the Richardsons’ every move as coded with whiteness.

And that perspective - the one that notices when things are particularly white - is something I can identify with. Little Fires is much more subtle about noticing whiteness than I am though. Where I muttered “this is some white nonsense” when a bar trivia category was “songs with the world ‘sail,’” Ng has the McCulloughs promise to feed a child Chinese food to connect her with her culture. Or has Lexie, whose boyfriend is black, declare that it’s so great that no one sees race in their town. Or has Mrs. Richardson feel entitled to barrel headfirst into affairs she has no business being part of. It’s in the claustrophobia that builds from the deliberate confines of the setting: a utopic, white-picket fenced community decidedly apart from the less desirable fringes of the town. A subtly observed us vs. them, where the central characters are almost certainly the “them.” In its hyper-awareness of whiteness, Little Fires gives its reader a sense of what every person of color lives through.

For me, Little Fires Everywhere and Chemistry and Crazy Rich Asians and Fresh Off the Boat are excellent forms of representation, even as they’re all incredibly different. And I am so grateful that all of these things exist. They’re great as independent works of art. And they’re even better for me, because I get to have the joy of being on the inside of the inside jokes.

But still. Not a single character in any of the works I’ve referenced is Japanese American. Not a single character in any of those works is a fourth generation Asian American. But I don’t blame those works for that. Those works are at least giving me something I recognize - an outsider's perspective on whiteness, a former PhD candidate, an exasperation with Buzzfeed lists, a family that doesn’t use their dishwasher. I would just like more. And when it comes to movies, I would just like any. Crazy Rich Asians is at least something. And all I’m asking for is something. And then, well, and then I’d like more something.

Because I am so glad that a story exists where an Asian person sees-and then rejects-a list of items that attempts to encompass every Asian American. Oh and as a last note? My parents really don’t ever call me “just to say hello.”

[theconservativebrief]

It has not been a great year for television so far.

There have been plenty of treats, to be sure, and even some real treasures. But compared to the way 2017 seemed to haul out new classics with astonishing regularity (to the degree that I couldn’t rank them when it came time to make a list), 2018 has featured a lot of shows where my recommendation comes with a caveat, or where I love it but plenty of my critical comrades despise it, or something like that.

This is fine, in many ways. TV criticism was defined too long by the idea that there were a simple handful of good shows, and critics could mostly agree on them. It’s exciting to get away from that era in some way, to argue about if Westworld is magnificent or malarkey, to discuss whether The Handmaid’s Tale is incisive or exploitative.

But it also means lists like these require far more grains of salt than they might have in the past. So here, presented alphabetically, are 24 TV shows from the first half of 2018 that I gave four stars or more and that have stuck around in my memory in the time since they aired. I hope you like them! But maybe you won’t! And since the TV year typically features more good shows in its first half than its second (due to the Emmys falling in September), my year-end list will likely feature almost all of these shows.

(A few caveats: I typically use the summer to catch up on stuff I missed, so some shows that aren’t here almost certainly will be come December. And I’ve tried to limit this to shows that aired six or more episodes in 2018 so far, cutting out some other favorites. I’ve made a list of things that missed due to one or the other of these caveats at the bottom of this article.)

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One of the best final seasons I’ve ever seen, the last 10 episodes of The Americans circled back to what the spy drama had always been about — whether this unlikely marriage between two KGB spies pretending to be ordinary Americans could survive all of the things threatening to rip it apart. The series finale is a pitch-perfect cap to six years of bleak but beautiful television.

How to watch it: The Americans is available for digital purchase, or on FX’s streaming platforms. It will eventually be on Amazon Prime.

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The second installment of American Crime Story after 2016’s The People vs. O. J. Simpson was less immediately arresting. But its depiction of ’90s America is just as impressive, tracing the circuitous route of serial killer Andrew Cunanan backward from his most famous victim through a gay scene struggling not to be forced back in the closet. Darren Criss’s work as Cunanan is masterful.

How to watch it: American Crime Story is available for digital purchase, or on FX’s streaming platforms. It will eventually be on Netflix.

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Donald Glover’s laconically loopy trip through the titular city grew bolder and more confident in its second season, as the characters endlessly debated ideas of what it means to be “fake” versus “real.” The season’s standout was the darkly funny horror tale “Teddy Perkins,” about the legacies of child abuse, but every episode stands as a pitch-perfect, beautifully honed gem.

How to watch it: Atlanta is available for digital purchase, or on FX’s streaming platforms. It will eventually be on Hulu.

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So far, 2018 has been a year of uneasy comedies, of stories that are ostensibly funny but hide something dark and sad at their core. No “comedy” embraced this idea more than Barry, about a hitman who would be an actor, played by Bill Hader. The show is terrifically funny, especially in its depiction of the fringes of show business, but what sticks with you is Barry’s inability to change.

How to watch it: Barry is available for digital purchase, or on HBO’s streaming platforms.

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A riotous trip through the deleterious effects of income inequality, Billions had its best, most cutting season this year, as the show blew up its own premise (by burying the investigation that had always been at its center), then spent the rest of its season vamping for time by digging into the ways those with money and power seem utterly oblivious to those without those qualities in the 2010s.

How to watch it: Billions is available for digital purchase, or on Showtime’s streaming platforms.

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You like fish? This has so many fish!

How to watch it: Blue Planet II is available for digital purchase, or on BBC America’s streaming platforms. It will eventually be available on Netflix.

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A deeply funny dark comedy about the cost of working for a terrible company, Corporate is one of the most visually audacious shows of the year, turning the workplace comedy into an excuse to indulge in gray, chilly frames, in the style of David Fincher. Somehow, that only makes the jokes, about the dehumanization inherent in trying to hold down a corporate job, even funnier.

How to watch it: Corporate is available for digital purchase, or on Comedy Central’s streaming platforms.

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For whatever reason, 2018 has been full of terrific spy dramas, but this one seemed to get a bit lost in the shuffle. Starring Oscar winner J.K. Simmons, it tells the story of a world that split in two late in the Cold War, with the second universe, initially a copy of our own, slowly becoming more and more different. Forget just having one great J.K. Simmons performance. Counterpart had two.

How to watch it: Counterpart is available for digital purchase, or on Starz’s streaming platforms.

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This satirical comedy, set on the campus of a predominantly white college, but focusing primarily on the school’s black students, hit another level in its second season. The show crystallizes Trump-era racism — just a new face on a very old American horror — through its storytelling and especially its visuals. The eighth episode, structured as one long conversation, is a marvel.

How to watch it: Dear White People is available on Netflix.

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I include the “season one” here in hopes that it’s unnecessary. Netflix has made noise about following up this dark British comedy with a second season, but doing so would be self-defeating, as this first season tells its story so perfectly that to tack on more would feel wrong. So watch this gem of a miniseries about a teenage sociopath and the girl he can’t bring himself to kill before it gets all screwed up.

How to watch it: The End of the F***ing World is available on Netflix.

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The space-faring political drama tightened the screws and ratcheted up the tension in its third installment, which collapses a full novel and a half from the book series it’s based on into a single season of television. Complete with memorable guest arcs from David Strathairn and Elizabeth Mitchell, the series finally dug into the true nature of the mysterious alien presence in our solar system.

How to watch it: The Expanse is available for digital purchase, or on Syfy’s streaming platforms. It will eventually be available on Amazon Prime.

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The comedy about women wrestlers and the basic cable TV show that broadcast them to the greater Los Angeles metropolitan area has a bit more sprawl than it knew what to do with in its second season. But the show is so open-hearted and generous to its characters that it doesn’t matter. Its stories of women navigating men’s spaces and womanhood as a kind of performance make for riveting television.

How to watch it: GLOW is available on Netflix.

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Already brutal and bruising, The Handmaid’s Tale became even more so in its second season. It removed some of the cold comforts of the first season to examine how living in a totalitarian society inevitably means that you become complicit in at least some of its horrors, even as those horrors are being visited upon you. Elisabeth Moss and Yvonne Strahovski are fantastic as they navigate a society set up to oppress them.

How to watch it: The Handmaid’s Tale is available on Hulu.

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This stand-up set is a must-see, as Australian comedian Gadsby sets up a long series of punchlines that then resolve into a complete deconstruction of jokes and who gets to tell them in a society filled with fatal power imbalances. It’s funny, yes, but also filled with a scorching fury that finally resolves in a sense that to do better, we have to tear apart every assumption we have.

How to watch it: Hannah Gadsby: Nanette is available on Netflix.

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I’ve always enjoyed this rural noir about two best friends who solve strange mysteries in and around the American South. But the third season, which features the two of them taking on the Klan, felt like the show turning a corner into its examination of how much America is defined by its gruesome past and how little any of us are willing to pay attention to that. Naturally, Sundance canceled it after the season aired.

How to watch it: Hap and Leonard is available for digital purchase, or on Sundance’s streaming platforms. It will eventually be available on Netflix.

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The CW’s daffy and inventive telenovela has always been some of my favorite TV comfort food. But in its fourth season, it somehow became something even more, leaning into storylines that underlined the show’s themes of family, perseverance, and love. It’s rare for a TV show to do a “character might have cancer” arc that doesn’t feel like a cheat, but Jane more than pulled it off.

How to watch it: Jane the Virgin is available for digital purchase, or on Netflix. Some episodes are available on the CW’s website.

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Here’s another terrific spy drama, this one focused on a bored spy (Sandra Oh) who finds herself intrigued — and then maybe even more — by her new quarry, a mysterious assassin (Jodie Comer). Killing Eve takes tropes you’ve seen a million times and makes them feel new again, and it’s the first TV show in ages to remind me of my beloved, dearly departed Hannibal.

How to watch it: Killing Eve is available for digital purchase, or on BBC America’s streaming platforms.

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The Looming Tower is dry and occasionally impenetrable. But I ended up loving the way this miniseries about the build-up to 9/11 slowly but surely built its case for how US intelligence agencies failed to spot what was right in front of them, leading to one of the biggest tragedies to ever occur on American soil. It’s not an argument for more intelligence work; it’s an argument for smarter intelligence work that remains relevant to this day.

How to watch it: The Looming Tower is available on Hulu.

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The middle stretch of this season reeled off classic episodes, like the show was in a groove it was never going to leave. What’s more, those episodes are all so recognizable as episodes — from a magic-inflected hour of short stories to a musical — that it became hard not to get caught up in the inventiveness. And the series’s emotional core about sad 20-something magicians trying to bring back the thing that makes them sad (magic) remains rock solid.

How to watch it: The Magicians is available for digital purchase, or on Syfy’s streaming platforms. It will eventually be available on Netflix.

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The second season of the remake of the 1970s sitcom of the same name is perhaps the most joyful show of the year, as the Alvarez family at its center struggles through life in these United States with heart and hope. You’ll see few TV performances as terrific this year as the work of Justina Machado and Rita Moreno, as a mother and daughter who are never defined by their conflicts.

How to watch it: One Day at a Time is available on Netflix.

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Ryan Murphy’s final series for FX (before leaving for Netflix) is this delightful, warm ’80s period piece about drag ball culture of the era and the idea of found families among people all across the LGBT spectrum. In particular, the show tells stories about trans women like few TV shows ever have, allowing them to have full lives and desires beyond their transition narratives.

How to watch it: Pose is available for digital purchase, or on FX’s streaming platforms.

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My favorite workplace comedy had maybe its best season with its third run, which both deepens the show’s interest in social issues (including age discrimination, something few TV shows would even think to touch) and also serves as a master class in how to spin romantic and sexual tension across an entire season of a TV series. When all of its stories came together in the finale, it felt almost magical.

How to watch it: Superstore is available for digital purchase, on NBC’s site, or on Hulu.

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More than 100 men sail into the Arctic in the mid-1800s, sure they’ll win glory for the British crown by discovering the Northwest Passage. None of them return, and this miniseries (the first in a new anthology series under the banner of The Terror), based on a Dan Simmons novel, imagines what might have happened to them, utilizing both historical research and a mighty monster to tell its tale. It’s grim and unrelenting but also starkly beautiful.

How to watch it: The Terror is available for digital purchase, or on AMC’s streaming platforms.

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Two sisters return to their Los Angeles neighborhood in the wake of their mother’s death, then vow to keep the bar she ran open to preserve their neighborhood in the face of gentrification. This lively half-hour drama examines ideas of identity, sexuality, and class consciousness, but never in a way that feels didactic. Instead, it offers heart, humor, and a touch of magical realism.

How to watch it: Vida is available for digital purchase, or on Starz’s streaming platforms.

The Good Fight CBS All Access

12 Monkeys and Channel Zero are other Syfy treats I’ve highly recommended in the past, but I’ve been able to catch up with neither so far. The CW’s Crazy Ex-Girlfriend technically aired six episodes in 2018 (exactly six), but I really want to see where it’s going with its current story arc. CBS All Access’s The Good Fight is one I just haven’t caught up with yet, to the consternation of my friends. NBC’s The Good Place will surely be on my year-end list but only aired five episodes in 2018 so far. I loved HBO’s The Tale, a searing story about the aftermath of sexual abuse, but it already made our “best movies of 2018 so far” list. And someday I will finish Netflix’s Wild Wild Country, but I liked what I saw.

Original Source -> The 24 best TV shows of 2018 so far

via The Conservative Brief